By Mahmoud Yasin Kurdi
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A senior Kurdish official strongly rejected allegations by former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has blamed the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State (ISIS) on the Kurds.
“The fall of Mosul was the result of Maliki’s wrong policies,” said Khasro Goran, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP’s) leadership council.
“Maliki’s statements are far from the truth, because the position of the KDP and the Kurdistan Regional Government have been very clear with regard to extremist groups,” Goran said. “It is not in the interests of KDP and Kurds to assist terrorists and to have a large city like Mosul under the control of terrorists.”
Maliki, who was prime minister when Iraq’s second-largest city fell to ISIS in June, said in a television interview that the Kurds were to blame for the military defeat.
“The Kurds told the Iraqi army that ISIS was there to fight Maliki and the Shiites, not the army,” Maliki told the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar television channel. “This encouraged the commander of the third division to withdraw, which resulted in the withdrawal of 35 to 40 percent of the army.”
Maliki singled out Brigadier-General Hidayat Abdul Rahim, the commander of the third division of the Iraqi army who is a Kurd. The former premier accused Abdul Rahim of showing loyalty to the Kurds, not the Iraqi army’s top brass.
Goran presented another version of what happened at Mosul.
“There were two divisions in Mosul, the second and third divisions. A Kurdish commander always led the third division, but the commander of the second division, which used to be a Sunni, was replaced by a Shiite upon Maliki’s order,” he said. “The Shiite commander in Mosul pursued several sectarian policies against Sunnis. This was the main reason that Sunnis in Mosul supported ISIS,” Goran added.
Abdul Rahim previously told Rudaw that, “The Sunni soldiers knew what was going to happen. Ten days before ISIS came to Mosul, 400 Sunni soldiers of the third division fled,” he said.
“I was only the commander of one-and-a-half battalion, not the entire division. Maliki had paralyzed the division just because a Kurd was commander of the division. The division did not have armored vehicles, mortars or bullets,” he disclosed.
The Iraqi Army collapsed in face of the ISIS advance. Iraqi soldiers abandoned arms and uniforms and fled en masse, some reportedly disguised as women.
Atheel Nujaifi, the governor of Mosul, disclosed the message sent to him on the day the city fell. On his Facebook page, he has placed the text sent by Faruq Araji, Maliki’s office manager, asking high ranking commanders to escape.
“Don’t you need women’s clothes for your high ranking officers?” the message asks, referring to the withdrawal of the commanders of the second and third divisions and other high ranking military officers.
Goran said that statements by Maliki, who now holds the very ceremonial post of a vice president, have “no value.”
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